Malicious Office (OLE) / .XLS — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 7b0395878d9ea215…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.16 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-07-17
MD5: 55c4cf769f3513225b79add920390d81 SHA-1: 0152a095635d544614bbeb5f87e5900ce4829947 SHA-256: 7b0395878d9ea2154174caa722386625daf0d83f5e281fdf0d0b09a61b1c7d62
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1204 User Execution

The file is an XLS document containing an embedded Equation Editor object that exploits CVE-2017-11882. This object contains a secondary PDF payload which, in turn, contains a direct link to an executable or archive payload. The VBA macros are empty, indicating the exploit is likely within the OLE object itself.

Heuristics 8

  • Equation Editor Ole10Native payload — CVE-2017-11882 critical CVE likely CVE_2017_11882_EQUATION_OLE10NATIVE
    An embedded Microsoft Equation 3.0 object (CLSID 0002CE02-0000-0000-C000-000000000046) carries an Ole10Native packager stream instead of the normal Equation Native/MTEF data. This is the weaponized Equation Editor RCE delivery shape used by CVE-2017-11882 / CVE-2018-0802 maldocs. The payload (font-record overflow + shellcode) is frequently encrypted and the stream name case-scrambled to evade scanners, but an Equation object holding an Ole10Native stream has no benign use.
  • Equation Editor OLE object high CVE related OLE_EQUATION_EDITOR
    Contains Equation Editor object — related to CVE-2017-11882 / CVE-2018-0802 exploitation, but CLSID presence alone is not the malformed MTEF exploit primitive.
  • Secondary embedded PDF body has suspicious static findings critical POLYGLOT_CHILD_PDF_STATIC_TRIAGE
    A valid PDF body was found at a nonzero offset inside another container and its carved contents matched PDF exploit or lure heuristics. This catches polyglots where the top-level magic routes to ZIP/OLE while a PDF reader or downstream parser opens the hidden PDF payload.
  • PDF link points directly to executable/archive payload critical PDF_DIRECT_PAYLOAD_LINK
    PDF contains a clickable HTTP(S) URI whose path ends in an executable, script, shortcut, disk image, or archive extension. Documents can legitimately link to installers, so this is a high-risk delivery indicator rather than a standalone exploit fingerprint.
  • Clickable PDF combines external action with parser-evasion structure high PDF_ACTION_PARSER_EVASION
    PDF has an external clickable URI together with object graph or xref structures that make parsers disagree, such as divergent duplicate objects, parser divergence, or xref offset mismatch. That combination is stronger than a plain link: the document is both an outward-action carrier and a parser-confusion/evasion sample.
  • VBA project contains no executable statements low OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains a VBA project, but extracted modules only contain attributes/options/comments and no executable statements.
  • Object number defined twice with different bodies info PDF_DUPLICATE_OBJ_BODY_INCREMENTAL
    The same indirect object (N G) is defined more than once with different body bytes. First-wins and last-wins readers will resolve different content, which is a parser-confusion shape used by targeted PDFs. Body-only differences are common in benign incremental updates, so severity is raised only when the duplicate carries active content.
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — see the per-URL labels for which channel (macro, JS, link annotation, document body, ...) reached each URL.
    URL https://https://www.google.co.in/example.com
    • http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/pdf/1.3/
    • http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/

Extracted artifacts 8

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
7f506327609c082af1cd37dde23bc2c71a000f7d1ef530b6abb66775040a7673		 vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 1206 bytes
ole10native_00.bin
8a1902056c576a6a2071cfde84ca3d3c8fe304bad1ed1730284352c3b8f7aedd		 ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD000E3E52/olE10nATivE 1404 bytes
font_00_sfnt_off0000817d.bin
68d167e68895a344f3603a4efd0d8438eb8fdebe759cee48f2b4adf75c76c961		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x817D 12100 bytes
font_01_sfnt_off00009f95.bin
50551000b9f90b3f445ee94749557d9ddf96697a74984b3ccf3d2bae66910750		 pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x9F95 15820 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
90b1f48ebeb8cc7c69c14b470551c14698054961cb0d45b3a013e2714f6a0a13		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1207296 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006200.pdf
fd82499d3e5e32967875a9f423e66696a2b337acc0b10d4b1acb0f97922d82c4		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6200 1186304 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e600.pdf
94a124317644cb1652f6974c2becf19ff3a7522dfc332d31e801ad84c4bca30d		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE600 1152512 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00023e00.pdf
42eb5d0f2fb562d8beb152d480c193293f775ffa183fb16bfae09b214997c6a3		 polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x23E00 1064448 bytes

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